On September 24, 2015, Pope Francis became the first pope to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress. Dorothy Day was one of four Americans mentioned by the Pope in his speech to the joint session that included Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton. He said of Day: “Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”

Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897–November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. She initially lived a bohemian lifestyle before gaining fame as a social activist after her conversion, and later became a key figure in the Catholic Worker Movement, earning a national reputation as a political radical. Some might perhaps deem her the most famous radical in American Catholic Church history.

In the 1930s, she worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combined direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. She did practice civil disobedience, which led at times to arrests, in 1955, 1957, and even in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.

As part of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933, and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in 1980.

Day supported herself as a journalist, writing a gardening column for the local paper, the Staten Island Advance and features articles and book reviews for several Catholic publications, like Commonweal.

She wrote in her autobiography: “I could write, I could protest, to arouse the conscience, but where was the Catholic leadership in the gathering of bands of men and women together, for the actual works of mercy that the comrades had always made part of their technique in reaching the workers?”

The Catholic Worker Movement

In 1932, Day met Peter Maurin, the man she always credited as the founder of the movement with which she is identified. Despite his lack of formal education, Maurin was a man of deep intellect and decidedly strong views, with a vision of social justice and its connection with the poor, partly inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. He provided Day with the grounding in Catholic theology of the need for social action they both felt.

The first issue of The Catholic Worker appeared on May 1, 1933, priced at one cent, and published continuously since then. It was aimed at those suffering the most in the depths of the Great Depression, “those who think there is no hope for the future,” and announced to them that “the Catholic Church has a social program…there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual but for their material welfare.”

It was an unapologetic example of advocacy journalism. It provided coverage of strikes, explored working conditions, especially of women and blacks, and explicated papal teaching on social issues. Its viewpoint was partisan and stories were designed to move its readers to take action locally, for example, by patronizing laundries recommended by the Laundry Workers’ Union. Its advocacy of federal child labor laws put it at odds with the American Church hierarchy from its first issue. (Ironically, the paper’s principal competitor both in distribution and ideology was the Communist Daily Worker.)

In 1972, the Jesuit magazine America marked her 75th birthday by devoting an entire issue to Day and the Catholic Worker movement. The editors wrote: “By now, if one had to choose a single individual to symbolize the best in the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the last forty years, that one person would certainly be Dorothy Day.”

Day suffered a heart attack and died on November 29, 1980, and is buried in the Cemetery of the Resurrection on Staten Island just a few blocks from the beachside cottage where she first became interested in Catholicism. Her many papers are housed at Marquette University along with many records of the Catholic Worker movement.

Much of her life in activism was fraught with controversy, Church versus anarchists, pacifism versus anarchism, respect for Castro and Ho Chi Minh, anti-Church and Franco. Yet despite all her works and writings, she and her life cannot be easily dismissed or hidden away. Her movement is a significant part of the cloth of American culture, of the spectrum of the American worker’s history, and is noted as part of her role in establishing non-violence as a Catholic principle: “the nonviolent witness of such figures as Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King has had profound impact upon the life of the Church in the United States” as written in a May 1983 pastoral letter issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Challenge of Peace.”

In 1983, the Claretian Missionaries put forth publicly a proposal for her canonization. At the request of Cardinal John J. O’Connor, head of the diocese in which she lived, in March 2000, Pope John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open her cause, allowing her to be called a “Servant of God” in the eyes of the Catholic Church. As canon law requires, the Archdiocese of New York submitted this cause for the endorsement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which it received in November 2012. However, some members of the Catholic Worker Movement objected to the canonization process as a contradiction of Day’s own values and concerns. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI, on February 13, 2013, in the closing days of his papacy, cited Day as an example of conversion. He quoted from her writings and said: “The journey towards faith in such a secularized environment was particularly difficult, but Grace acts nonetheless.”

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“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.” –Henry David Thoreau

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…” Once more we have braved the 18-wheelers that ruthlessly plow through rain troughs, spraying everywhere. Once more we pack and unpack: MOTEL; pack and unpack: MOTEL; pack and unpack: ARRIVAL. “WE’RE BACK!”

PIC OF COTTAGE 16

Yes, we have arrived. It’s been two years. A friend said the spiders probably have saddles; the webs are taut, but not too many. Dust and some dirt. But not too bad.

We’re back in town: Bethesda, Ohio: Same post office; pizza-parlor-restaurant remains. However, some town expansion: new fuel pumps, re-conditioned gas station; new clock and clock tower, and newly established military memorial. Some streets recently paved.

More ducks and geese at the lake, noisily sounding out for food from cottage guests. Some dead trees felled by recent storms lay scattered in the park area, awaiting disposal.

Inside, for me, after a week of sorting clothes, and catching up on minor repairs, I’m ready for…nothing. TO VACATE. IT’S VACATION! Is it not? I brought six magazines and three books. Why? And the books unread from previous years (including Doctor Zhivago and Madame Bovary)? I’ve already made a trip to the library with book donations. (I love that place. But with little self-control, I checked out four DVDs and picture-filled books: all about chocolate, and new watches of 2017.)

Barnesville Public Library

So friends ask, “What do you do when you go to Ohio? What do you do all day? Do you ever get bored?” Never bored. And the days go so quickly…

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“Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that Heart of Darkness had been analyzed more than any other work of literature that is studied in universities and colleges, which he attributed to Conrad’s “‘unique propensity for ambiguity.’” [Wikipedia information]

“Let’s take in an old movie tonight. Have you seen The Hunger?” “Will I like it?” “It is delicious.”

Many claim to have a hunger for knowledge. Knowing about the types of critics may satisfy that hunger.

Should you like to dig you teeth into an oldie-but-goodie–but a special treat–locate a copy of The Dynamics of Literary Response by Norman N. Holland (1968). You will not go away unsatisfied.

He writes that our first pleasures that quieted us were oral pleasures, satiating our hunger. We were held by a mother, nurtured by a mother. Here is the foundation for taking in “pleasure”–artistic or literary. Yum!

From there, remember memoriesofatime being read to, and how pleasurable it was, being cuddled or curled up to someone or in someone’s lap? More gratification and satisfaction.

And we curl up and watch a good movie with some ice cream. Or our movie-going or movie-watching is a feast sometimes, actual appetite satisfaction with popcorn and soda (pop), Twizzlers, and perhaps even nachos.

We read or attend, for pleasure, maybe even receiving pain; but we manage feelings that are virtual. Even though, as Holland says, we “devour books,” and are sometimes “voracious readers,” taking it all in.

The Psycho Critics help us find our way through the maze of our dreams and fantasies, help us clarify muddled images, awake or not. And even help us understand art and literature through knowing our earliest awarenesses of gratification and satisfaction.

All that food and drink (and drugs) in movies do play a role in our “liking” or “not liking” a movie.

It’s complicated, this movie reviewing stuff. But maybe reviewing is simply a matter of telling persons who are busy what is better to see than to see something else, simply what NOT to see: “Don’t waste your time.” “It’s a waste of money.” “Don’t bother. See X instead.”

However, do I want a review, or a formal analysis of a movie? “Thumbs Up” or 5-Stars, or cultural response, production history, or values discussion?

What do you NEED to make you WANT to see a particular movie: old, new, classic, recent, color, black and white, documentary, drama, comedy, Netflix, Redbox, STARZ, Cobb Theatres; story, technology, actor or actress, theme, technique–and more, much more? Does the critic count for you? Explanation and evaluation?

“Critics would be useful people to have around if they would simply do their work, carefully and thoughtfully assessing works [of art], calling attention to those worth noticing, and explaining clearly, sensibly, and justly why others need not take up our time.” –John Gardner, On Moral Fiction (1978)

SO: Watch these movies for “greatness”–or NOT!”

UP IN THE AIR

CASABLANCA

P.S. I LOVE YOU

A GOOD YEAR

LOVE ACTUALLY

JERRY MCGUIRE

ALIEN

BLADE RUNNER

THE HOURS

THE ENGLISH PATIENT

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

* * *

“Art is meant to be experienced, and in the last analysis the function of criticism is to assist that experience.” –David Daiches (1956; 1981)

In many Irish-American families, children sometimes used the familiar or informal “Da” for “father” or “Dad.” It would be pronounced like “Dad” without the final d, not “Dah” as in “la-di-da.” (We were not typical Irish-American; we were Irish-German-Bohemian.)

1957

Always he knew how to wear a traditional fedora. And knew how to tip his hat to a woman–or especially to a nun:1960

Without a doubt, one of the happiest of times–memoriesofatime–being told by me Da and me:

October 12, 1963

I don’t remember me da ever cursing or swearing. Really? Well, maybe once or twice on a delivery that went bad, he could have shared a bar of Lifebuoy soap with Ralphie. But I loved it when he exclaimed: “Are ye daft?”

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“A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. Fingerprints are easily deposited on suitable surfaces (such as glass or metal or polished stone) by the natural secretions of sweat from the eccrine glands that are present in epidermal ridges. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand.

“Deliberate impressions of fingerprints may be formed by ink or other substances transferred from the peaks of friction ridges on the skin to a relatively smooth surface such as a fingerprint card. Fingerprint records normally contain impressions from the pad on the last joint of fingers and thumbs, although fingerprint cards also typically record portions of lower joint areas of the fingers.

“Human fingerprints are detailed, nearly unique, difficult to alter, and durable over the life of an individual, making them suitable as long-term markers of human identity. They may be employed by police or other authorities to identify individuals who wish to conceal their identity, or to identify people who are incapacitated or deceased, as in the aftermath of a natural disaster.” [See Wikipedia for more material’]

Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin?
(Hide hands behind back)
Here I am! Here I am!
(Show L thumb, then R thumb)
How are you today, sir?
(Wiggle L thumb)
Very well, I thank you.
(Wiggle R thumb)
Run away, run away.
(Hide LH behind back, then RH)

[This is a song often sung in Head Start classes I taught, bringing memoriesofatime.]

This is my Thumbkin [my thumb].

This is a fingerprint identification chart.

History of MY LEFT THUMBKIN: SMASHED in a church door when I was a youngster in Chicago (with little memories of that pain). SMASHED in a friend’s car door while I was in college: “Good night. Thanks for the ride home.” SLAM! Car begins to pull away. “WAIT!” as I scream in pain, pounding on the passenger’s side window, Thumbkin still in the door. In the Emergency Room, I looked at the thumb twice the size as normal, bruised and blue and internally bleeding. But flattened. And the throbbing. Throbbing. Throbbing. “Scalpel.” Holes drilled into the nail. Pain and blood.

Later: August 1964: Rochester, Minnesota, Airport parking lot. Slipped, fell, and slid along asphalt, Thumbkin extended. ER: cleansing of bits and pieces of Minnesota, stitches, and awful drilling into the bruised and battered nail, throbbing. And throbbing. And throbbing. Young ER resident took an alcohol lamp, bent a paperclip, grabbed it with a forceps. Taking the red-hot paperclip, he pssit pssit pssit pssit pssit five holes into the nail, blood squirting and oozing. NO PAIN! “Just a trick I learned in med school.”

My fingerprints are on file. Or not…

I was first fingerprinted in the spring of 1963, for a government position: The U. S. Post Office [USPS]. Once more, in 1980, then in 2003–all for positions with public agencies. After retirement, I applied as a free-lancer, and once more needed to have my prints updated. “Mr. O’Neil, could you come with me, please.” I followed down the long hall in the administrative offices, in 2010, and was led into a small room. On a small table was a device I had never before seen. “You’ll have to insert your left thumb into that hole with the red light.” “Is there a problem?” “You don’t seem to have fingerprints. We need to do a deeper, thorough examination of your ridges, that’s all.” After some time, I was given the proper directions and allowed to leave. “But whatever happened to my prints?” I had asked before leaving. “Acid…”

My professional career began in 1963. I had a few hobbies–coin collecting, for one– but none like doing stained glass work, from 1990-2014, until my back “gave out”–and I could no longer lift and bend like before. I had to stop. An essential part of working with glass and solder is the use of acid flux.

Paste Flux

A flux (derived from Latin fluxus meaning “flow”) is a chemical cleaning agent, flowing agent, or purifying agent, for metal joining. Flux allows solder to flow easily on the working piece rather than forming beads as it would otherwise. Flux is usually, normally, applied with a brush, to the joints to be soldered.

Stained Glass Piece Soldered Restoration

But in the turning and moving of a glass piece being worked on, if the artist does not wear gloves, flux begins to work on the skin and, of course, the finger tips. Flux is an acid, and a poison.My fingertips would peel; I thought nothing of it. No pain. Just washed well. I did my best to take care, and did wear gloves as often as possible, but…

And that’s the real story of my thumb and fingerprints…

In the minds of some, however, there exists another story, one of fascination, intrigue, and cover and covert operations: That my forty-year teaching career concealed my true identity and sheltered my true profession: CIA Operative. How this story may have been initiated and by whom puzzles me.

I see no resemblance to any “secret agent.”

JIM

JASON

These pictures were taken many years ago, and I never remember telling stories to my boys who might have had over-active imaginations, with their Batman and Robin, and other hero-Super-hero themes in their lives. Why would I have told the kids about the CIA? Did someone else tell them? Well, that story–and the fingerprint issue–just needs to be put to rest once and for all. And that is that.

BTW: Here’s a picture of one of my favorite authors who, along with Robert Ludlum, did write good political intrigue fiction.

“Off and on for more than twenty years, I have been keeping a journal. One expects a famous writer to keep a journal,” wrote Aristides, the pen name for Joseph P Epstein, editor of The American Scholar, 1975-1997.

“The first function of a young writer’s journal: a place to grouse, a place to dramatize one’s condition in prose, and a place to bemoan the fact that, once again, this time in the instance of oneself, the world in its ignorance is failing to recognize another genius.”

“In my [current] journal…I have done my best to cease complaining and have taken as my motto the lines from the beer commercial that runs ‘I guess it doesn’t get much better than this.’”

“…to feature introspection and self-analysis…even in a journal has its limits.”

“Who needs this?…I suppose I alone do. Something in me impels me to record much I have thought, or experienced, or read, or heard.”

“I find keeping a journal quickens life; it provides the double pleasure of first living life and then savoring it through the formation of sentences about it.”

Graphomania: a writer’s disease “taking the form of simply being unable to put down the pen (the authorly equivalent to logorrhea). ‘Advanced’ stage takes the form of needing to write down everything because anything that hasn’t been written down isn’t quite real.”

“The graphomaniac’s slogan is ‘no ink, no life.’”

“I must confess that I do not write in my journal every day. But when I do write something in my journal, I feel rather more complete… Not that journal writing elevates me–it doesn’t, usually…”

“I do feel upon having made an entry in my journal as if I have done my duty, completed, in effect, an act of intellectual hygiene.”

“I do not often look into my journals; yet whenever I do, I am impressed by how much experience has slipped through the net of my memory.”

“I suspect that anyone who keeps a journal has to be something of a Copernican–he [or she] really must believe that the world revolves around himself [or herself].”

“Everything I have written is these journals is true–or at least as true as I could make it at the time I wrote it. Lying, as such, is not, I believe, a question in my journal.”

“I try, when writing in my journal, to keep in mind the twin truths that I am someone of the greatest importance to myself and that I am also ultimately insignificant. (This is not always so easily accomplished.)”

“Sometimes I am astonished at the items that find their way into this journal of mine.”

“I [once] wrote that John Wayne had become part of the furniture of [my] one’s life. The first half of one’s life, it strikes me, one fills up one’s rooms with such furniture; the second half, one watches this furniture, piece by piece, being removed.”

“My journal has served as a running inventory of my days, and I am pleased to have kept it.”

“Though we must live life forward, ‘Life can only be understood backward,’ wrote Kierkegaard. Yet a journal does provide backward understanding…a great aid in replaying segments of past experience, in running over important and even trivial events, in recollecting moods and moments otherwise lost to memory.”

“A journal is a simple device for blowing off steam, privately settling scores, clarifying thoughts, giving way to vanities, rectifying hypocrisies, and generally leaving an impression and record of your days.”

“When you are through with it, [and] when the time has come to leave this…earth, you can even pass the damn thing along to your yet unborn great-grandchildren.”